All these charts are in multi layer CAD format. That applies to all printed VFR charts produced in the last 30 years, and certainly applies to any electronic product such as Jepp MFDVFR.
So Jepp could easily supply these to Foreflight. They cover most of “political Europe” now.
One problem is licensing. Jepp obviously want to sell MFDVFR for €300+ per year and they will want to do that even if almost nobody is buying it because it costs too much 
That is how business works… nobody wants to lose face.
Back when Jepp used to do their paper “VFR/GPS” charts (the only charts ever in Europe which covered anything like most of Europe, apart from the US ONC/TPC ones which never showed airspace and anyway ended c. 1998) they used to do an electronic version of these, which would run in Flitestar/Flitemap. These charts ended in 2013. The latest issue has escaped into the wild and exists as generic jpg and georeferenced Oziexplorer format 
but obviously is out of date in places now… Now, I have been told by certain flight planning app publisher(s) that Jepp wanted several hundred € per client in license fees for these. I vaguely recall that a product called Flymap (or some such) did exist with these as an option, at that sort of extra cost. And IIRC Avidyne offered them on some MFD product… That sort of license fee obviously almost totally kills the “GA tablet” market. The vast majority of European GA never leaves their home country for cultural reasons alone (actually most of it never flies more than 100nm from base) so the market for a “complete solution but at a price” isn’t there – notwithstanding the number of people on EuroGA who really do VFR touring.
The bottom line is that Jepp would have to take a drastically different approach to licensing their VFR charts. They would have to accept that MFDVFR is never going to sell much and they need to look at other platforms on which to show their charts.
I don’t believe a tablet product will succeed in Europe without really good VFR charts. The IR holder community is of the order of 5% of the total (maybe more if you look at who actually pays for stuff) so VFR support is essential to success. This isn’t like the USA where (a) of the order of 20% hold an IR and (b) you can fly VFR easily up to 17999ft and (c) various other reasons help.
The market leaders here (PFMS originally and later Skydemon) spent a lot of time digitising data from the national AIPs and various other sources. PFMS (like all others from those days) started off using DAFIF but when that was blocked in 2005 they moved to a pay model. This is a fair bit of work. Garmin Pilot are now having to go up this road, presumably alone like the other two. Foreflight can do it but they will have to throw some money at it, and implement some really good QA.
Peter wrote:
All these charts are in multi layer CAD format. That applies to all printed VFR charts produced in the last 30 years, and certainly applies to any electronic product such as Jepp MFDVFR.
Actually they’re not. They’re built on the fly from a database using rather complex algorithms dealing with placement ob objects/labels and decluttering. That is not an easily transferrable data format. What we see today in FF and GP is rather simple — the standard Jeppesen ARINC 424 navdata on top of very sparse “cultural” data, i.e. terrain + cities + streets/tracks etc. While the Jeppesen ARINC 424 data is mostly workable (gives you correct airspaces, waypoints including VRPs), there is still a lot more that should be added apart from the cultural data. One example is VFR routes.
The old “raster” maps (called “sectionals” in the US) are fixed layout and built from databases as well using mapping applications and fine tuned by humans. Basically a 50 year old technology. They are just bitmaps and trivial to implement in an app. Such maps exist today from most CAAs for their country (some like the German DFS do a whole bunch of countries) but not a way to get a uniform coverage across a larger area.
Actually they’re not.
Actually, everything you have written Achim agrees with the quote from me which you are responding to.
Peter wrote:
Does Foreflight have any of the features of Garmin Pilot relative to interacting with Garmin panel mounts (e.g. FP transfer)?
I see your direct question re Garmin has been answered, but I would add that ForeFlight also has 2-way flight plan transfer with Avidyne IFD gear.
chflyer wrote:
I have an open question about the IFR coverage as it doesn’t seem to include Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Baltic States. But it does include the other common W.Europe countries including Scandinavia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Greece.
I reported this to ForeFlight last weekend and lo and behold the missing coverage has now also appeared. So ForeFlight now has full Europe IFR IAC and VFR VAC coverage per the map on their web site. They seem to be moving quite quickly and have promised enroute charts for later this year. The IFR airways are on the map, but not the details except for the programmed route.
BTW, Achim has now added ForeFlight integration to autorouter along the same line as Garmin. Clicking the ForeFlight button opens the autorouter route in ForeFlight.
This is outstanding, because I can now plan a trip with autorouter, import it directly into ForeFlight and then transfer it via wifi from ForeFlight to my IFD panel. Still not cheap, but $1’088 is only 60% of the Jepp price mentioned above of $1’450 plus another $340 for the VFR VAC charts if one wants those too.
Still learning ForeFlight. It is a feature-rich program and a good addition to the market, especially for mixed IFR/VFR flyers. Adds some choice. I now just need to figure out how to get the plates geo-referenced on top of my ForeFlight moving map.
It seems that not only does FF include worldwide Jeppesen IFR charts these days, but also Jeppesen’s VFR charts for Europe. This should make the app a killer item in Europe, especially for those that fly both IFR and VFR. I recall quite clearly that having worldwide Jeppesen charts on print back in the days was a $10K/year deal. A substantial cost. According to the FF website all of Europe for both IFR and VFR is $889/year. A huge saving compared to back in the print days. Even a full worldwide subscription doesn’t seem to add up to much more than $3K/year, which is much less than the $10K/year it used to cost.
Great and interesting times!
ForeFlight Jeppesen subscription costs
PS. I’ve personally used FF since it came out pretty much, and absolutely love it. I’m glad I can eventually fly to Mexico, Caribbean and to Europe using the same app.
I have been using FF with the performance add on all over the atlantic and US and back. It works well. Not perfect yet but it will be a real contender.
@JasonC I couldn’t see it covered Greenland on the map, but is that part of the Euro subscription?
It seems that not only does FF include worldwide Jeppesen IFR charts these days, but also Jeppesen’s VFR charts for Europe. This should make the app a killer item in Europe, especially for those that fly both IFR and VFR. I recall quite clearly that having worldwide Jeppesen charts on print back in the days was a $10K/year deal. A substantial cost. According to the FF website all of Europe for both IFR and VFR is $889/year. A huge saving compared to back in the print days. Even a full worldwide subscription doesn’t seem to add up to much more than $3K/year, which is much less than the $10K/year it used to cost.
We have many threads on Jeppesen terminal chart pricing, and they get very confusing because of different options, the biggest being that what Jeppesen call “Europe” is only basically the “west of Iron Curtain” Europe. See e.g. here and here and it gets even better when one finds that one can buy the Jepp data for a panel mounted device from either Jepp or Garmin (I recall a thread where this was discussed but can’t find it right now). However the overall situation can be summarised as follows:
The traditional four-device price is about 10k (worldwide) or 2k (all of political Europe). A lot of people used to share this package, with up to 3 others – see various past threads.
More recently Jepp introduced a single-device price of 0.9k for all of political Europe. My guess is that is what you are seeing at $889. This one cannot be shared; well not legally… a lot of pilots share via printing PDFs but you can’t AFAIK do that conveniently from any tablet product (can JeppFD print a whole airport to a single PDF now?).
There are packages for panel mount boxes which can display these and these can (or do) come with an Ipad (JeppFD) or PC (Jeppview) program but the overall cost per device remains roughly the same AFAIK. In fact, apart from the single-device version, Jepp terminal chart pricing has not changed in many years. Most of their ~80k subscribers are corporate ops and they just pay whatever…
It also sounds like Jepp, via Foreflight, is doing a single device worldwide price of 3k, which would make sense.
Another Jepp-Foreflight thread is here.
The basic issue is that
Peter,
Data is not really an issue, as ForeFlight will be using Jeppesen data and has access to other full service data suppliers. Flightplan filing is also not an issue, as ForeFlight owns its own European company, Aviation Cloud (AC) that can perform this task. ForeFlight currently uses AC for filing direct into the AFTN network for all ICAO IFR and VFR flights in Canada, and IFR in the North America region (Mexico, Cuba, Caribbean, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, …). From the public presentation this week at Oshkosh “Global unlimited filing directly into AFTN (future) North America is live. Europe in Beta”.
If there are any Pilots regularly fling in Europe that are interested in becoming a Beta team member, they can send me an email and I will forward it to the Beta team manager. Of course, it is up to the Beta team manager to decide if a pilot is admitted to the Beta team.
